The Hillary Fallacies

Nevermind the absurdity of Hillary's experience claims, those have been well-refuted to anyone who wants to look at the issue for more than a second. Hillary is a Deconstructionists dream: every single assertion she advances buckles immediately under the force of the surge of oppositional implications. For instance, on experience, it implies that she did a lot in the White House, which would then imply that she was the co-candidate (which she has denied vociferously), which then also calls into question if Bill is her co-candidate (another denial there). Furthermore, experience is a funny word. In a way, it just means 'I was there.' After all, the health care fiasco is being counted, yet it produced less than nothing (and, btw, she refuses to release the records of her meetings/conduct). The Obama counterpunch about Walmart was great. Which brings me to my next point.

David Brooks was on The Tim Russert Show today saying the fundamental difference between Hillary and Obama is that she is getting the middle class, high school educated crowd, and he the college-educated. The problem with this populist paean as her balustrade is that the nostalgic nod to the good times of the 1990s falls apart when you realize that the gulf between the wealthiest and the middle class grew faster than ever before. Look at this graph. Furthermore, how does Clinton get the credit for the prosperity of the 1990s? He had 2 years with a D congress, in which nothing happened, and then one of the great reversals of all time occurred.

Meanwhile, how does the race-baiting and ugly racial politics (like pandering to Latinos by saying things like 'no woman is illegal') fit into this picture of being for the middle class? Of course they don't. The commonalities are plain though: Clinton's appeal is the more basic, machine-oriented one from days of yore. This idea that Hillary is 'experienced' and has the best chance to operate the machine to get people the outcomes they want should be anathema to real populists, who don't want to admit that politics is a vending machine, since they don't have the coin to operate it.